


Only Your Truth Counts

by Miss_M



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dark, F/F, Father-Daughter Relationship, Femslash, First Time, Gen, Rare Pairings, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-08
Updated: 2016-07-08
Packaged: 2018-07-14 03:43:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7151666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/pseuds/Miss_M
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Abigail reminds herself, not for the first time, that Freddie is not her friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Abigail Alone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Allekha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Allekha/gifts).



> This is a treat. Title is from Wolfsheim’s “Künstliche Welten.” I own nothing.

Abigail makes nice with the other girls in group for one reason and one reason only: she needs them to tell her the code for the electronic keypad on the main administrator’s office door, so she can sneak in after lights-out and use the computer. All the girls do it, it’s like a rite of passage, more so than the first time they share something truly intimate ( _embarrassing, uncomfortable, incriminating_ ) in group. Breaking institutional rules enforces complicity with the group, confirms the conviction that they don’t belong in the hospital. They’re only temporarily there, in opposition to the system ostensibly trying to help them. 

Predictably, the others taunt Abigail, ask her if she’s going to look up her cannibal daddy, if she’s going to read about the case being built against her as his accomplice. They don’t know shit, some Amazonian tribe which never saw a TV before would have taunted Abigail with the same words, so obvious are they. The important thing is that they give Abigail the code. One of the girls lingers after the others have gone to the cafeteria, offers shyly to be the lookout while Abigail is in the office. Abigail refuses, politely: she’s not out to make either friends or enemies, she just needed the code.

Later that night, of course Abigail reads up on the investigation into what her father did. Of course, even if the more she reads, the more she feels like scratching her arms till she claws off her skin in long strips. The raw scar on her throat pulsates under the bandage. The air-conditioning hums, chilling Abigail’s bare feet, but she can feel her father’s warm, moist breath on her cheek and the side of her neck as he apologizes for being about to kill her.

Abigail closes all the tabs with news and gossip sites, closes the browser for good measure, like wiping a whiteboard clean. Takes a deep breath, opens a blank browser. Types in ‘child sexual abuse.’

Abigail needs something she can safely say in group. Something which won’t incriminate her, which may garner her a little sympathy. She is tired of everyone looking at her like they don’t trust her with metal cutlery ( _they don’t, too many girls are on suicide watch for the cafeteria to have anything but disposable knives and spoons made of recycled plastic, it still feels like a personal accusation against Abigail alone_ ), tired of all the jokes about her new preference for vegetarian dishes. 

Even more important and pressing than her reluctance to _share_ in group, Abigail doesn’t want to go to jail. Everyone to whom she’s spoken since waking up in the hospital have made clear – without coming right out and saying it, not in her fragile mental state, not when they want to keep her vulnerable and pliant – that there may well be a trial, and she the star, the only defendant, because her father is dead, and as much as they’d like to, they can’t dig up and trot out his moldering corpse in a courtroom for everyone to recoil from and condemn and feel better about themselves. 

Abigail doesn’t know where her father is buried. Some potter’s field, no doubt, but she doesn’t know for sure. No one has told her, and she hasn’t thought to ask till just now. 

She needs to find something she can talk about in group, with Dr. Bloom, with Freddie Lounds and Dr. Lecter and Will Graham, who killed her father. They all have eyes which bore into Abigail like needles. The kinder they act, the softer they speak, the worse it is. 

If she can say _My daddy made me suck his cock since I was seven_ or _He put it in me this one time and it really hurt, it hurt me_ , and make it sound real, like it actually happened, like it’s the only truth worth knowing, Abigail could hide behind that, use it for cover while she figures out how she’s going to survive the rest of her life. She has to be able to sell it, all the various doctors who come to talk to her are trained to spot lies gleaned off the Internet, too many girls in group got raped by fathers, brothers, uncles for real. For really real, for universally true. Abigail can’t just b.s. her way through this like it’s a pop quiz in English or history, her strongest subjects so she could usually wing it. 

Her father never touched her, not like that. Even when she was 13 and all the kids at school gossiped about why Jessica Miller’s dad went to prison and Jessica moved with her mom to New Mexico, and Abigail became briefly obsessed with measuring every hug or kiss her father gave her for a grain of impropriety – even then, she knew her father would never do such a thing. Not her father. Not her daddy. Not to her. 

It’s not like her father ever gave her a choice, Abigail thinks while she erases the search history, deletes all traces she was ever on the administrator’s computer, pulls the office door to till the lock beeps, then pads barefoot back to her room. 

It’s not like he ever sat her down and told her that he couldn’t stand to let her leave him, fly off into the wide world and never be his little girl again, and that was why he needed to kill girls who looked like her, and he needed her, Abigail, his only daughter, to help him with the hunt. Like he taught her: dissimulation, stealth, cunning. 

If he had, if words about love and murder were ever exchanged between them, Abigail wouldn’t need to trawl medical websites and chatrooms for clues to help her fake that her father had molested her. She could say in all honesty that she told her father no, but he forced her to help him anyway. She could say she was too scared to say no, she feared what he would do to her if she challenged him. She could show that she was one of the victims, not an accomplice, not both victim and accomplice at the same time. Ambiguities would land her in jail, she would never be allowed to be anything but the Minnesota Shrike’s twisted daughter. 

How was she supposed to explain, to even begin to say, that she understood what her father wanted without their ever speaking about it, just as they never spoke when hunting, at the moment just before Abigail pulled the trigger, when the deer or rabbit was in her crosshairs, no time for words. How could she explain that she was simply protecting herself, when her father loved her so much that he killed eight other girls rather than harm her? She ate the meat he brought home from hunts he undertook while Abigail was busy with dating or homework or babysitting. She watched TV with her mom and dad after dinner, and she washed the dishes, scraped the congealed meat juice and ketchup off with a knife even though her mom always told her not to do that because it ruined the crockery. How was she supposed to explain what it felt like to live with her father, know on a level below words who he was, and have it feel normal?

Abigail knows she should have ceased loving her father when he tried to kill her, when she learned, beyond equivocation, what he did. How do people do that, she wonders, just turn their love for someone off like a light switch?


	2. Abigail and Freddie

Abigail’s dad never would have embarrassed her like some dads did, greeting her dates with a half-assembled hunting rifle held casually in one hand – instead, he insisted on a quiet chat behind closed doors with the guys she dated. Abigail never knew what was said, she just knew that she never had problems getting guys to go exactly as far as she wanted them to, whether that meant dropping her off without so much as a kiss or dropping her off after they’d both got off, without stopping for a cigarette or to say hi to his friends so he could show off or whatever. Abigail always made it home before her curfew, so her parents would have no reason to wonder about the panties stuffed to the bottom of her hamper.

Abigail went out with Nick Boyle a few times the fall of her senior year. She always liked him because he was tall and quiet and didn’t seem to notice people making fun of his red hair. Abigail liked his hair. She liked that Nick was two years older and dating him would annoy Cassie, who could be a real bitch sometimes. In the end, Cassie didn’t care about them dating, and Nick broke it off after they had sex in his car. Suddenly he remembered his scruples about dating someone who was still in high school. In his own way, he was a gentleman or, as the guys in school would say, a pussy. 

Abigail’s dad thought it a shame that Nick didn’t want to see her anymore, said Nick seemed like a nice kid. _A bit old for you_ , dad added, wagging his eyebrows at Abigail, he couldn’t help teasing her a little.

 _Da-a-ad!_ she whined, but it made her laugh. A dumb rather than a funny joke, something they shared. 

This is the kind of thing she’ll never be able to tell anyone, Abigail thinks. If she told anyone her dad could always make her laugh, all they’d hear would be that Abigail was the same kind of monstrous as her father had been.

If she admitted to killing Nick Boyle in a moment of fear and panic and anger at what her life has become, no one would believe she didn’t do it as revenge because Nick had dumped her. _You butchered him, Abigail_ , Dr. Lecter said like he’d expected as much from her.

If Abigail told any of this to Freddie Lounds, Freddie would spin it in whatever way would ensure their book sold well. Freddie would be alright with Abigail going to jail if that boosted sales, as it probably would. 

Abigail reminds herself, not for the first time, that Freddie is not her friend. Abigail is alone, everyone else is on the other side. 

Freddie inveigles, by who knows what means, permission to take Abigail out for dinner without a hospital attendant or FBI escort. They eat in a place run by hipsters who charge a lot for plain soy burgers with fancy names, then Freddie suggests showing Abigail her place and maybe getting a beer before returning to the hospital. 

“You can have tea if you don’t drink beer,” Freddie adds, making Abigail want to do something to shock her into accepting that Abigail’s an adult, even if she’s not old enough to drink yet. She’s seen more terrible stuff than most adults do their whole lives. She wants Freddie to look at her without that knowing, ironic smile always hovering in the corner of her red lips.

They’re having beers in Freddie’s gleaming kitchen ( _when she opened the fridge, Abigail glimpsed beer and takeout containers and a whole rackful of condiments, Abigail’s mom would have tutted and shaken her head in disapproval_ ) and talking about Nick Boyle’s death. Abigail doesn’t want to talk about this, but Freddie won’t let it go. 

“Nicholas Boyle was just a dumb kid who was really messed up because his sister was murdered,” Freddie says, her eyes never leaving Abigail’s, and raises her bottle to her lips. “He wasn’t a killer.” She takes a swig of beer, still watching Abigail, exposing her throat, so much smoother yet just as easy to read as the boys Abigail used to date.

At least, Abigail hopes she’s reading this right. Her heart is pounding, her hands are sweating so she fears the beer bottle will slip out of her hand and shatter on the floor, she doesn’t want to talk about Nick Boyle. She’s tired of having to talk all the time and feeling alone, pinned by other people’s eyes, even in her dreams she is being judged. 

Abigail sets her bottle down on the counter and strides, hurls herself closer, like she knows exactly what she wants and what she’s doing. She kisses Freddie like she’s sealing the older woman’s lips, sealing any further words inside. 

Abigail was handled by many a doctor and nurse while she was unconscious, and Will Graham held her hand briefly one day in the hospital conservatory, but other than that nobody’s touched Abigail since her father put his arm around her and kissed her cheek and slashed her throat open with a kitchen knife. She’s shaking with the sensation of full lips, wet tongue, breasts pressing against hers, a spicy perfume filling her from head to groin. Abigail has never been one of those girls who made out with other girls at parties so guys could watch, the kind of girl who got ‘lesbo’ scrawled on her locker at school. She’s always fit in and protected herself. She’s protecting herself now. 

“I don’t think you’re capable of making rational decisions right now, Abigail,” Freddie says when they part, lips half a hand-span apart, still touching from chest to knee. “But you’re old enough to make irrational ones.”

Abigail wants to rage ( _she’s been wanting to rage for weeks, throw stuff and pitch fits in the middle of group when they tell her she’s safe after she describes her father molesting her_ ), but Freddie doesn’t give her a chance. She kisses Abigail again, presses the girl close, one arm around Abigail’s waist, other hand cupping and squeezing Abigail’s breast through her sweater and bra. Abigail is familiar with this greed to get to a girl’s body, but she doesn’t mistake Freddie Lounds for one of her Minnesota dates, not for a second. Freddie pulls down Abigail’s thin scarf with her teeth without easing her grip on Abigail’s body. The scar on Abigail’s throat is still fresh and red, Abigail’s toes curl when Freddie licks along it. She was going to act cool and in control, but she lets out a high moan while Freddie tongues her scar and pushes her thigh between Abigail’s legs. 

It’s more like a decathlon than playtime. Focused, intense, protracted. The backseats of cars weren’t like this, at all.

Abigail can’t decide what she likes better: the soft, full, pliant feel of gripping handfuls of Freddie’s thick curls or Freddie’s tongue, relentless on her. Freddie makes obscene noises between Abigail’s legs, spread as far apart as they’ll go without her groin hurting. Abigail is certain Freddie is making those noises on purpose. She isn’t half as smooth when she licks Freddie, later, and her jaw hurts, but Freddie’s breathless urging goads her into trying harder till she gets it right. 

When Freddie climaxes and Abigail has wetness smeared all over her mouth and chin, Abigail clambers, crawls, fights her way on top, kisses Freddie desperately, to stop her saying anything once she gets her breath back, rubs her breasts against Freddie’s, smaller and harder than Abigail’s own. Reluctantly she frees up Freddie’s mouth so she can sit up straight, the better to grab Freddie’s hand and force it between her own legs. Freddie is saying something, she will not stop talking, Abigail is pretty sure she’s being called a beautiful girl. She squeezes her eyes shut and rides Freddie’s hand faster, pictures the tendons standing out on Freddie’s forearm as she plunges her fingers rapidly in and out of Abigail. Abigail rubs her nipples with both hands and cries out ( _sobs_ ) at the ceiling.

Later, late enough that cars passing down the street outside Freddie’s apartment building are as distinct as shooting stars, Abigail can’t take any more: she’s numb between her legs, her nipples hurt when Freddie sucks them. Her thigh is clammy where Freddie rubbed herself against it while pinching Abigail’s breasts and pulling her hair. Abigail’s tongue feels weird, her fingers are not her own. She feels removed from her body and everything it does ( _has done_ ). She’s going to catch so much trouble at the hospital: Freddie promised to bring her back by 10 p.m., Abigail is out way past her curfew.

The laughter which bursts out of her must sound dreadful, scary, but Freddie doesn’t flinch. She lifts her head from Abigail’s chest, strokes the hair off Abigail’s face, sits up against the headboard, half cradling Abigail’s body against her side. The gesture is almost maternal, and it only makes Abigail scream harder with laughter. 

“Why don’t you tell me whatever it is you’ve been avoiding talking about, Abigail.” Freddie strokes her shoulder absently, like Abigail’s a stray dog. Like she hasn’t just made Abigail come and come and come, and now Abigail is falling to pieces in Freddie’s bed. “It’s your story, only you can tell it.”

Abigail inhales, hiccoughs, presses her hand against her open mouth to stop the laughter. Her hand smells, she’s shaking, tears are leaking out of the corners of her eyes. She props herself up on her elbow, on her hand, certain she can control the laughter, not even trying to control the tremors or the tears. She needs those. 

“Hannibal Lecter killed Nick Boyle,” she tells Freddie, crouched in the middle of Freddie’s bed like a supplicant or a long-distance runner at the finish line. She looks beaten, drained, stripped of all her defenses. She needs to look it if she’s going to convince Freddie. “He gutted Nick in front of me and made me swear I wouldn’t tell or he’d tell the FBI that I helped my father kill all those girls.” She bites back the urge to add _I had no choice_. Overkill.

Freddie is sprawled against the headboard and the pillows, her legs apart, her shaved sex on display. Abigail glances at it and away, at least she doesn’t have to fake nervousness over Freddie’s utter lack of shame. 

“And did you?” Freddie asks, that tiny ironic smile inerasable from her lips. “Help your father?”

“No. I didn’t.” 

Abigail keeps her eyes on Freddie’s, lets tremors run through her shoulders, her arms, her thighs. Sweat rolls down her ribcage from her armpit, a tear slides off the tip of her nose. She doesn’t say Freddie has to believe her. Freddie has to do no such thing. She only has to decide Hannibal Lecter makes a better subject for a bestselling book than Abigail and her dad. 

Freddie’s expression doesn’t change while a car approaches her building, passes it, and keeps going. Not a police car, telepathically summoned to haul Abigail away, have her locked up as a liar and murderer and accomplice. 

Then Freddie smiles. “Come here.” Abigail drags herself across the sheets, lets Freddie hug her with one arm, more like a buddy than a lover. Not at all like a parent.

Freddie is smiling and watching Abigail from only a few inches away, and Abigail suspects, with a feeling like she’s swallowed a leaden ball, that Freddie knows she is lying, and she suspects that it doesn’t matter. Freddie is no more on Abigail’s side than anyone else is, but then no one is on Freddie’s side either. Freddie is out for herself, she understands about selfish choices which allow a person like Abigail, like Freddie, to survive. Abigail still hasn’t stopped shaking, but she breathes more easily when Freddie speaks.

“I’m going to get us something to drink, my laptop, and a fan to cool your pussy,” Freddie says. Abigail suspects Freddie knows she’s making Abigail uncomfortable. “Then you’re going to tell me everything you know about Hannibal Lecter. And then, if we have time before the newspaper archives open, I’m going to teach you about fisting and let you cook breakfast. We have a lot of work to do.”


End file.
